1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a soldering iron, and particularly to a soldering iron with a replaceable tip.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2005-010092, filed Jan. 18, 2005, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
Soldering tips of soldering irons are widely available having copper of excellent thermal conductivity provided around the heater and the outer surface of the copper being iron plated. The object of iron plating of the soldering tip is to prevent the copper from dissolving into the melted solder, so-called solder leach. The rate of solder leaching of iron plating is approximately one-tenth that of copper.
Nevertheless, iron plating in this type of soldering iron, while not to the extent of copper as mentioned above, still has a property of being leached by melted solder. Consequently, as soldering work is performed over time with this kind of soldering iron, the iron plating is slowly dissolved into the melted solder, eventually exposing the copper. Once the copper becomes thus exposed, it is quickly leached away, thereby rendering the soldering tip useless. That is, repeated soldering degrades the soldering tip, thereby causing the soldering iron as a whole to become unserviceable. To solve this problem, there have been proposed soldering irons having cartridge-type replaceable soldering tips (Japanese utility model (registered) Publication No. 3001893).
However, in a soldering iron constituted with the aforementioned replaceable soldering tip, when removing the soldering tip from the iron body, it is necessary to grasp the soldering tip by hand and pull on it. The soldering tip can be easily grasped by hand when the temperature of the soldering tip has cooled down to around room temperature. However, when the soldering tip is at a high temperature, the soldering tip cannot be removed by grasping by hand, and so replacement cannot be performed while waiting for the soldering tip to cool down.